Day: 2016-08-14

On August 5, 2016 Edward Snowden tweeted a very odd message to his followers.

Telling followers it’s time, followed by 64 characters of code.

The tweet was quickly deleted but it has not stopped conspiracy theorists from taking to social media, many of which think he has either been captured by the US or killed therefore many suspect that the 64 character tweet was in fact, a dead man’s switch.

A dead man’s switch is a message set up to be automatically sent if the holder of the account does not perform a regular check-in or tweet or post etc. It is well known that Julian Assange the founder of Wikileaks has a dead man’s switch which is his insurance policy should anything happen to him.

A great many suspect that in Edward Snowden’s case, his dead man switch could very well be the key to encrypted files he had stolen from the United States Government.

It is widely known that the information Edward Snowden released back in 2013 was just a tiny fraction of what he actually obtained when he left the USA.

Oddly reports have indicated that at least 8 torrent sites used for distributing large files were immediately taken offline after Edward Snowden’s odd tweets. Which suggest the distribution of files were being suppressed or slowed in some way. That only added to the speculation that Edward Snowden has been killed and that the key to his sensitive files has been released to those in the know, those that can release the information in those files to the world.

So far, nothing major has been released still, many feel that something huge is coming.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has worked extensively with Edward Snowden claims the whistleblower is “fine,” but has refused give any further information on his safety.

A bitcoin subreddit user tests the key:

A bitcoin user who goes by the name Bobanaut tested the 64 character tweet as a private key hash on the bitcoin blockchain, which traced to transactions between two addresses on Sunday. The first transaction logged was in the amount of 0.000911 BTC, suggesting that Edward Snowden was using the cryptocurrency to convey a cryptic 911 distress signal.

While others pointed out the statistical impossibility that the 64-character hex code used by Snowden could be an unintentional hash in a bitcoin transaction.

Edward Snowden’s normally active twitter feed has gone silent since these two tweets were sent on August 5th.